РУССКИЕ МАСТЕРА БАЛЕТА НА БЕЛГРАДСКОЙ СЦЕНЕ В XX – НАЧАЛЕ XXI ВВ.

The main goal of the article is to outline significant contribution to the history of Belgrade ballet of those Russian dancers who came to the Kingdom of Serbia after leaving Russia in 1917, and to monitor the contribution of the next generations of Russian masters who came to Belgrade, the capital of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, later the Socialistic Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. They have invested a lot of their effort, talent, and time, laid the foundations and provided very fast development of Belgrade ballet so that it caught up step with European ballet scene. The article, based on numerous sources and literature, including unpublished memoirs, confirmed that dancers who came after Bolshevik revolution contributed to the establishment of the national ballet center at the Belgrade National Theater and the ballet school where the first dancers of the Serbian origin were formed under the tutelage of Elena Poljakova, Nina Kirsanova, Xenia Grundt-Dumet. Celebrated ballerinas Anna Pavlova and Tamara Karsavina performed at the Belgrade stage in the twenties of the last century. In addition, unlike previously common approaches to this subject limited to the role and activity of the Russian emigration in the interwar period, the article is extended from the period during and after the Second World War to the present days. Accordingly, the paper includes the renowned Soviet masters such as Leonid Lavrovsky, Maya Plisetskaya, Natalia Dudinskaya, and those who have played important role in the contemporary ballet life in Serbia, to name Hmela, Pilipenko, Kasatkin, Logunov, and Kostjukov